


Your Boyfriend's Friends

by rain_sleet_snow



Series: My Family (And Other Dinosaurs) [14]
Category: Primeval
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-01-31
Updated: 2009-01-31
Packaged: 2018-03-09 21:40:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 947
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3265316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rain_sleet_snow/pseuds/rain_sleet_snow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jon still isn’t totally clear on Emily Sayers’ role. I mean, she’s gorgeous, blonde and an automatic flirt, and she has brains, and James likes brains. Wouldn’t you be jealous?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Your Boyfriend's Friends

                Lester shut the door behind Emily, and remarked dryly: “The phrase that springs to mind is ‘force of nature’.”

 

            Jon grinned from where he was perched on the back of one of Lester’s black leather sofas, swinging a foot idly. “You could say that.”

 

            “Did you like her?” Lester asked, and Jon thought he detected a very, very small hint of anxiety.

 

            “Yes, I did,” he said, trying not to hesitate. After all, he did like Emily: she was friendly and smart and baited Lester for her own amusement, coaxing out a side of Lester nobody saw at the ARC, not just sharp and sarcastic but genuinely funny, with a surprising amount of care for others.

 

            Lester nodded, but Jon could see the flicker of worry on his face before it suddenly became expressionless.  “I’m glad. She’s one of my closest friends.”

 

            “She told me so,” Jon agreed, neutrally. “How did you meet her?”

 

            “At a parents’ evening Kathy couldn’t make, a good couple of years before she divorced me. Emily was the only other parent visiting the teachers alone, and she trod on someone’s foot in a three-and-a-half inch heel for patting her bottom.”

 

            Jon snorted. Lester allowed himself a small smile, and then opened his mouth as if to say something, halted, and evidently decided that what he had planned to say needed to be said. “She’s one of the women Kathy accused me of cheating on her with. In fact, she was the prime suspect.”

 

            Jon whistled. “Kathy doesn’t like her, then.”

 

Lester shook his head, absently moving the cafetière to the side of the sink. “She never has done. She resents her, I think.”

 

            The tightening of his boyfriend’s jaw told Lyle that he was onto too sensitive a subject, and he steered the conversation away. “Is Emily always that protective of you?”

 

            “Protective?” Lester closed the dishwasher, straightened up and glanced sharply at Jon, frowning. “Did she give you hell in the lift?”

 

            Jon shrugged. “Nothing I couldn’t handle.”

 

            “Emily becomes very difficult to handle very quickly. She distracts people by being blonde and giggly, and the next thing they know she’s made off with their intestines- _and_ a sizeable chunk of their annual budget. What did she say?”

 

            “She essentially warned me off hurting you in any way, or she’d take her revenge, and said that your brother asked her to take a chunk out of me for him.”

 

            Lester sighed, smiled, and emptied coffee-grounds down the sink. “That sounds like Emily. And Ralph. I presume it was Ralph?”

 

            “That’s the name she mentioned,” Jon said. He slipped off the back of the sofa, stretched, and moved over to Lester, wrapping his arms around him from behind. “Leave the washing up and come to bed.”

 

            “Patience is a virtue,” Lester said sanctimoniously, but turned in Lyle’s arms and kissed him. “Look, don’t worry about Ralph and Emily. It’s just that... they were quite heavily involved in trying to keep me sane.” He paused, and ran a finger down Jon’s face, and then, without looking him in the eyes, said softly: “I felt like the world was falling apart.”

 

            Jon put his arms around Lester and held him for a moment. “I can see that, sometimes,” he said quietly.

 

            “Oh yes?”

 

            “Yeah. Every time we bicker and Liz looks at me oddly, I know she’s telling me that if I’ve hurt you I can expect revenge. And sometimes...” Jon leaned back, and touched the skin at the corner of Lester’s eye gently. Lester raised an eyebrow at him. “When you talk about her, sometimes you look like she betrayed you.”

 

            James leaned his head against Jon’s shoulder. “We betrayed each other. She betrayed me by failing to trust me, and I betrayed her by not telling her I still loved her, and in the resulting fiasco, we both stopped trusting and loving each other permanently. Every now and then I feel as if I never knew how sharp Kathy was until she butchered me.”

 

            Jon’s arms tightened involuntarily around him.

 

            “There is no call to crush my ribs,” Lester said prissily, which was his way of trying to move the conversation on.

 

            Jon kissed him quickly. “You know you love it, sweetie.”

 

            “And what do I keep telling you about calling me sweetie?”

 

            “Many things. Would you prefer petal?”

 

            Lester’s mouth dropped half-open, and Emily was right, he _did_ go bright pink- and then his eyes narrowed, and he growled: “ _Emily_ clued you in on that.”    

 

            “Absolutely!” Jon grinned, and kissed him again.

 

            Lester failed to be distracted, although he appeared to enjoy the kiss, and surfaced with his eyes narrowed. “I’ve let myself in for absolute hell, haven’t I?”

 

            “Wait and see.” Jon’s fingers went to work on Lester’s belt buckle.

 

            Lester sighed, hands sliding under Jon’s t-shirt. “Distraction techniques. Don’t think I don’t know what you’re doing.”

 

            Lyle found the zip, and divested Lester of his trousers. “I’ll live. And so will you.”

 

            Lester lifted the shirt over Jon’s head. “Unless you kill me between the pair of you. I say it again: I’ve let myself in for absolute hell.”

 

            Jon chuckled. “Why do you have so many buttons? They’re awkward.” He ripped Lester’s shirt down the front, buttons pinging everywhere for Liz to tread on in the morning, although she had gone to bed hours earlier, pointedly removing a set of earplugs from the medicine cabinet before she went. Lester seemed inclined to protest the destruction of his garments, so Lyle silenced him with a large hand over his mouth and continued, grinning: “Well, you know what they say – _petal_ \- Heaven for the climate, and Hell for the company!”


End file.
